Student Financial Analyst

Position Overview:

The Student Financial Analyst is responsible for providing functional leadership and oversight of all students' financial operations, ensuring the accuracy, integrity, compliance, and efficient delivery of student billing, receivables, refunds, stipends, waivers, and related financial processes. The role serves as the University's subject matter expert for student financial systems and processes, overseeing system integrations, financial controls, policy implementation, and process improvements. As the primary escalation point for complex financial, operational, and system-related matters, the Lead works closely with internal and external stakeholders to ensure exceptional service delivery, financial stewardship, and a seamless student experience while supporting the University's strategic and operational objectives.

Key Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership & Quality Assurance

• Supervise, mentor, and manage the Student Financials Associates and Specialists staff, setting performance goals, managing workloads, and ensuring adherence to internal controls.
• Oversee and enforce the strict application of fee policies and actively drive the receivables management strategy across the team to achieve a "minimal receivables" target for all outstanding dues.
• Conduct final review and sign-off on complex financial processes, including batch voucher generations, end-of-term clearance settlements, and significant student refunds and adjustments.
• Serving as the senior point-of-contact for Hostel, Financial Aid and donor tagging; collaborating with the OOA, Residence and OFA teams to ensure student-wise calculation and application of tagging are accurate, reconciled, and aligned with hostel’s, OFA’s or grant’s criteria.

2. Refunds, Stipends and Waiver Management

• Leading and overseeing all stipend processing activities (e.g., NOP, PhD, HEC, SEEF, PEEF, BEEF and ADB), ensuring accurate and timely disbursement, and compliance with donor/grant requirements, including its reconciliation.
• Reviewing all types of Student Refunds and forwarding them to the Treasury section for its timely payment through IBFT/IFT. · Ensuring accurate and timely disbursement of funds for the refund cases, and compliance with in-place Fee Refund policies.
• Guiding team members for processing fee refunds for exceptional cases.

3. System Integrity & Technical Oversight

• Act as the Subject Matter Expert and primary interface with IST for all Zambeel, SAP, Admission System, and Bank Gateway functionalities related to Student Financials.
• Directing the accurate configuration of all fee structures (rates, waivers, taxes, item types) for new terms and new admission batches, ensuring consistency between the Admissions system and Zambeel.
• Leading the continuous monitoring and reconciliation of the Zambeel-SAP integration, taking ownership of identifying, investigating, and resolving complex data migration anomalies, posting errors, and knocking-off issues.
• Overseeing budget availability is verified in all relevant heads before any financial data is migrated from Zambeel to SAP.
• Overseeing functional testing in Zambeel and providing an overview of Bank Gateway-related attributes to ensure smooth fee collection.
• Managing the creation of new item types in Zambeel and their proper mapping to respective GL accounts in SAP for new grants, donors, and stipends, coordinating closely with IST.

4. Complex Processing & Audit Coordination

• Managing and resolving highly complex student account issues, including those related to mid-year donor changes, policy exceptions for withdrawals, and intricate data discrepancies requiring cross-departmental resolution.
• Lead the coordination for all internal and external audits, ensuring the team provides timely, accurate, and comprehensive data, reports, and documentation, maintaining strict university policies and confidentiality.
• Directing the accurate and policy-compliant execution of block hold activities and providing supervisory review of the final student clearance process.

5. Stakeholder Communication & Reporting

• Serving as the senior point of contact for escalating inquiries from students, parents, and administrative departments regarding financial policy and account discrepancies.
• Supervising the Finance Helpdesk (600+ monthly emails) operates at an expert level, providing clear, consistent, empathetic, and policy-compliant responses, particularly for complex instalment/extension requests.
• Preparing and presenting high-level financial reports and analysis for the senior management.
• Providing accurate Revenue, Waivers, Student Numbers related financial information to relevant stakeholders as and when required.

Knowledge & Skills:

• Expert knowledge of student account management, billing cycles, AR/AP principles, and grant accounting within a higher education setting.
• Advanced proficiency and proven hands-on experience in ERP systems (SAP and Oracle/PeopleSoft), particularly in configuration, reconciliation, and integration management.
• Superior analytical and problem-solving skills to diagnose and resolve complex financial system and account discrepancies (e.g., reconciliation issues, & data anomalies).
• Strong verbal and written communication and presentation skills, capable of conveying complex financial information to diverse internal and external stakeholders.
• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and manage a small-to-medium team in a high-pressure, deadline-driven environment.

Behaviours:

• Exceptional Team Leadership
• Integrity
• Accountability
• Commitment
• Resilience Under Pressure
• Advanced Problem-Solving

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Commerce, or a related discipline from an HEC-recognised institution.
• Professional qualification or part qualification, such as ACCA, ICMA, CA, CPA, or equivalent, will be preferred.

Experience:

• At least 5 years of progressive and relevant experience in student financial services, accounts receivable, or a comparable area, including significant experience in supervisory or senior capacity overseeing systems, process integration, complex operational workflows, and student/customer service functions.
• Experience working in a higher education institution or similarly complex service-oriented environment.
• For CA - Completion of articles
• FOR ACCA - Minimum 4 years of experience